


Negotiations

by themillersson



Category: Glee
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-30
Updated: 2010-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themillersson/pseuds/themillersson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn, Kurt, and Rachel figure out how to solve the Finn-centric love polygon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negotiations

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Set in Season 1, pre-Theatricality.

"Rachel.” A flat voice came from the practice room’s doorway.

Rachel lifted her head, startled, from the pile of sheet music she’d been digging through. She frowned curiously at the newly arrived blonde figure and finished pulling a few sheets of paper out of the heap.

“Quinn?” she greeted, voice composed but somewhat wary. “Is there something I can help you with?” It wasn’t as if the two girls were enemies anymore, as far as Rachel could tell, but Quinn still insulted her at least once per Glee rehearsal, so she was regretfully forced to conclude that they weren’t friends yet, either.

Quinn nodded and stepped further into the room, practically exuding purpose. “Yes, actually. We need your help with something.”

The unaccustomed sweetness underlying the ex-cheerleader’s direct tone was enough to make Rachel even more wary, so she frowned as she said, “While I’m glad that you feel comfortable coming to me with a problem, I would be more effective as a source of help if you gave me some description of-“ she stopped and replayed what Quinn had actually said. She started more slowly, “Who, exactly, is ‘we’ in this circumstance?”

Quinn gave a secretive smile, which was somehow both smug and just on the nice side of sickeningly sweet, as Kurt Hummel strutted into the room. He gave Rachel a brief nod by way of greeting before the unhurried thunk-click of the door closing and the lock being flipped filled the room. Rachel began to worry that they had regressed to the point of a few months ago when the two others might actually have been trying to kill her.

Kurt turned around from the door and fixed her with a disconcertingly direct look. Rachel quickly held the music in front of her like it was a Kevlar vest. He looked her up and down, not quite holding in a pained grimace as he took in her sweater vest and jabot, and sighed. “You explain,” he said firmly to Quinn.

Quinn nodded at him and walked across the room to sit heavily on a chair in front of Rachel. Rachel held her ground, but glanced from one to the other with trepidation. “Explain what?” she asked, a little less boldly than before.

“Alright.” Quinn leaned against the back of the uncomfortable seat and pursed her lips for a moment before diving right in. “We know you’re off again with St. James-”

“And we know that you’ve been eyeing Finn Hudson again.”

Quinn gave Kurt the stink-eye for interrupting her. Impressively, he didn’t flinch. “I thought I was explaining,” she huffed. He shrugged and leaned back against the door. Rachel furrowed her brow, unsure where exactly this was going. Quinn smoothly picked up again on her previous thread after shooting Kurt a last venomous glare. “Anyway, we’ve seen you get jealous when other girls flirt with him, so we assume you’re still interested in him. Also, we know you’re insecure about whether he could stay interested in you.” At Rachel’s wary look, she rolled her eyes and added, “Kurt was in the girls bathroom – again – and overheard your conversation with Tina.”

“Mr. Schuester decided he wanted to talk about my apparent lack of male role models, it was a perfectly legitimate hiding place,” Kurt objected immediately, but Rachel ignored him in favor of looking very hard at Quinn.

“What do you get from telling me this?” she asked quietly. It would be perfectly in Quinn’s modus operandi, or would have been before she began to mellow after Sectionals, to bring up all of Rachel’s insecurities before crushing her with every single one of them, but there was no cruelty in the grey eyes now locked on hers. Cool calculation, yes, but even with her admittedly sub-par people-reading skills, Rachel was fairly certain that she could see an edge of nervousness there.

“I want him, too.” There was something more open in that weary, cautious statement than anything Rachel had heard from Quinn since Babygate had blown wide. “And so does Kurt,” she added, “although you already know that.”

Rachel was still wary enough to continue mulling everything over and just neutrally responded, “I think everyone knows that, except for Finn.”

A swift grin crossed Quinn’s face and a cough came from near the door. Rachel wheeled around to stare wide-eyed at Kurt, who was blushing and staring very hard at the back wall.

“No,” Quinn said, with a sly kind of cheerfulness, “Finn knows. And Finn doesn’t seem to hate the idea, if Tuesday afternoon was any indication.” Rachel was fairly sure her jaw dropped. “You might not want to sit on the piano bench, by the way.”

Beneath Rachel’s absolute shock, something like hurt began to blossom. She closed her mouth and pushed her suddenly trembling lips together, placing her now-forgotten sheet music on top of the piano as neatly as she could. “Why are you telling me this? If you just wanted to come in and hurt my feelings-“

“That’s not it,” Quinn cut her off at the same time as Kurt said, “We’re not here to try and hurt your feelings, Rachel.”

More than the interruption, the shock of Kurt addressing her without even a hint of insult made Rachel stop talking. She found herself staring at him again, questioning and hurt and not quite hopeful yet.

Kurt turned his gaze to his nail beds rather than face her scrutiny and went on more quietly, sounding resigned, “He’s definitely not 100%, Sean Hayes gay. More like Katy Perry gay. He kept trying to grope my chest and looked disappointed every time, so you still have a good chance. And he didn’t seem interested in anything long-term.”

Rachel wasn’t sure whether relief or jealousy was stronger at the moment, but confusion made a break for the front of the pack as Quinn leaned forward on her elbows and gave her a determined look.

“I miss him,” Quinn admitted, “but he doesn’t fully trust me. As stupidly nice as he is, even if we did get together, I’d always worry about him trying to turn the tables and cheat on me. Now that he’s gotten a taste of being single with half the school fawning over him, I honestly don’t know if I could keep his interest, either.”

“Especially since Quinn doesn’t want to put out while she’s pregnant. He’s moved beyond being satisfied with over-the-shirt groping,” Kurt clarified bluntly. Quinn shrugged, but didn’t deny it.

Rachel looked very hard at Quinn and then at Kurt. Both looked far too serious to be setting her up for a fall, even if she did believe that they would randomly team up to antagonize her without any real catalyst – of course, now that she’d pictured them working together against her, she had a new thing to be terrified of, right up there with really hairy spiders and dairy gumming up her vocal chords. “Are you suggesting we form some sort of Finn-Hudson-is-accessible-but-not-available support club?” she asked, grasping for a logical direction they were going with this.

“No,” Quinn stated firmly, looking at her with that uncharacteristic nervousness again.

“We’re suggesting that the three of us join forces.” Kurt had stopped examining his nails and was facing her directly, only the slight tension in his would-be uninterested posture hinting at nerves equivalent to Quinn’s. “If we cooperate, we can all get what we want, as none of us is going to get it – him – separately.”

“You want to – to share Finn?” Rachel’s voice climbed in pitch with each word until it was nearing dog-whistle territory. If she hadn’t spent years training her hearing to pick up on even the subtlest variation in notes, she would have said that she couldn’t believe her ears. She threw her hands up helplessly. “How would that even – I thought you both hated me!”

Neither Quinn nor Kurt protested the first part of her exclamation, proving that her life had indeed become weirder than she ever expected. As to the second, though… The pregnant ex-cheerleader and gay teen looked at each other and seemed to have a wordless conversation, during which Rachel reviewed the situation and briefly wondered if she’d stumbled into some really odd Lifetime movie about foursomes.

“I don’t hate you,” Quinn finally said. Rachel reflected that Quinn had never really lied to her before, so she resisted the urge to look too dubious at this statement. “Yes, I was jealous of you while Finn and I were dating, and yes, I have been a bitch to you before and since, but it was partly a popularity thing then and now it’s habit as much as anything.” She seemed to realize that as excuses went, it was a pretty poor one, so she added, “If it helps, I am willing to work on that. Stopping it, I mean.” The fact that she huffed and looked away, embarrassed, when she said it, told Rachel that the other girl meant it. “I actually do respect you,” Quinn murmured, sounding like the words were being pulled out of her unwillingly. “And… I wouldn’t exactly not want to be friends some day, alright? Even if you say no.”

“And although I find your personality grating most of the time,” Kurt started unapologetically, “and I fully intend to burn half your wardrobe as soon as I can get within ten feet of your closet, I don’t actually hate you, either.” He pulled a face that was somewhere between ‘you have to believe me’ and ‘oh, God, I can’t believe I’m saying this, someone shoot me now,’ and pushed ahead quickly. “I still don’t want to come in second to you, but I hate losing to anyone and, well…” he struggled for a moment before valiantly admitting, “If it had to come to a draw with anyone, you’re talented and ambitious enough that I wouldn’t totally hate that it was you.” Though she knew indignation would be a more appropriate response, Rachel felt inexplicably touched. From Kurt, that was as close to a declaration of friendship as one could hope for. Before she could say anything, maybe go over and hug him, if he wasn’t too opposed, he closed his eyes and blurted out, “Also, you have good taste in music and men despite your horrendous taste in clothing, and I suspect we could bond.”

Quinn actually giggled.

Rachel was aware she shouldn’t feel awed by such half-hearted declarations of maybe-friendship, but Kurt and Quinn were both looking at her with something like fear of rejection, and that was… intriguing. That look had never been directed at her before. She couldn’t remember the last time someone other than Jesse or Finn had come to her with a declaration of even sort-of-like, and for it to be two of her previous rivals…

“Why me?” she couldn’t help asking cautiously. “Couldn’t you two have done this on your own?”

The others still looked on edge, but Quinn shook her head, blonde hair flowing in a way shampoo ads never could replicate. “If it was just the two of us, we’d kill each other and possibly Finn within a week.”

“We’re both too manipulative,” Kurt admitted with a tight shrug. “With you, it might balance things out and, besides,” he shot her a lop-sided little smile and she sent a tentative one back, “it didn’t feel right to not ask.”

Rachel thought about it. Her hands absently went to the stacks of paper on the piano and she neatened the corners as she turned the matter over and over in her mind. Kurt was obsessively straightening his cuffs and Quinn was beginning to bite her lip by the time Rachel finally spoke up, just one word. “Alright.”

Both stared at her. “You’re serious?” Kurt managed.

Suddenly, she was feeling much more cheerful. Rachel beamed brightly. “Of course! As the matter stands, none of us has, or will have, Finn in any serious committed way, but with our combined talents and determination, we’ll have a much better chance of achieving our goals!”

Quinn blinked. “You aren’t going to freak out about your reputation at all? I know mine has been dead for months, but it took Kurt about ten minutes to stop spazzing over what everyone would think.”

“I wasn’t ‘spazzing,’ I was considering the implications of a relationship involving girls to my sexuality, thank you,” Kurt objected, but Rachel ignored him and just airily waved a hand at Quinn’s suggestion.

“I don’t intend to. Every good actress has had an unconventional love life by the standards of her day, and I feel that a stable polyamorous relationship would be boundary-pushing without being emotionally detrimental to any involved. As long as Finn agrees to the situation-“

“He will,” Kurt promised. “He likes making everyone happy, and this will make him look like a bigger stud than Noah Puckerman, which is something he can’t pass up.”

“As I was saying,” Rachel continued. Kurt failed to look apologetic. “As long as Finn agrees, I see no reason this shouldn’t work out, as long as we all agree to share equally and don’t try to make unequal claims on his attention or affections.”

“Since we won’t actually be competing this time, I can agree to that,” Kurt said with a shrug, finally walking away from the door to stand by Rachel.

“I think we can make it work,” Quinn agreed. She lifted herself out of the chair with a gallant assist from Kurt and held out her arms imperiously, a soft smile playing around her lips. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Kurt and Rachel chorused. Rachel looked confused for a second, but Kurt and Quinn pulled her into a hug and, although it was somewhat awkward – Kurt stiffened a little when their breasts pressed into his torso and Quinn’s baby bump got in the way and Rachel squeezed too tight because she was so happy that she didn’t have to initiate the embrace for once – it felt really, really good.

Eventually, they all pulled away, and Rachel nodded decisively. “My dads are away for the evening. If we want to draw up a plan of attack tonight, you would be more than welcome to come over and watch musicals while we brainstorm.”

The other two nodded, although Quinn looked ready to debate the musicals part. The blonde tamped down the impulse in favor of getting along, though, and Rachel took that as an indicator that this might really work. She also took it as a very good sign that, after a moment of shyness when Kurt held out an elbow for each girl, they all walked out of the room arm-in-arm, smiling like they were ready to take on the world.

 

\-----

 

“Dude.” Puck said, looking down the hallway from the alcove where he had so not been listening to the conversation between the three gleeks. “What the fuck.”

“Rachel agreed to tag-team Finn after all?” a voice asked from near Puck’s waist and he whirled around ready to punch someone until he saw Artie.

“That is so not cool!” Puck groaned, slumping against a locker. “Finn can’t be more of a stud than I am. I at least made out with two of the people in that room, how are they still into that giant freakazoid?”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Artie offered, taking off his glasses to polish them on his shirt, “my girlfriend’s off making out with Brittany in a storage closet right now.”

“Sucks for you, man – wait, Brittany?” Puck blinked. Okay, so maybe he was being insensitive about the whole Artie’s-girlfriend-making-out-with-someone-else bit, but… “Isn’t Brittany hooking up with Santana?”

Artie rolled his eyes and slid his glasses back on. “Yes, but they’re not exclusive. Besides, Santana’s in the Cheerios changing area having hate-sex with Mercedes.”

Puck could feel his jaw drop but let it hang for a second as he processed that image. Okay, he decided, he would definitely process that image some more later. At home. In his… He managed, with an effort, to pull himself back to the issue at hand and sneered, “What, is today homo day? Don’t tell me Mike and Matt are-“

“-Making out in Principal Figgins’ office at the moment with Jesse. I think it was Mike’s idea.”

Puck wanted to bang his head against a wall. “Dammit, everyone’s getting some except for us! What the hell, that is so not right!”

“We could fix that.” Suddenly, there was an arm wrapping around his waist and pulling him onto Artie’s lap, and Puck stared in shock and growing interest at the other boy’s sudden leer. “Welcome to the Partie, Puck."


End file.
